Simon Ifeanyi Ezeh
This bogus concept states that when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden as they ate the forbidden fruit, they died spiritually (got separated from God) and that this death was automatically passed on to all men of all races so that whenever a child is born, he is born a sinner.
Of course, expectedly, it is one of Paul’s concepts or attempts at explaining the dynamics of God’s kingdom and it is not only a lie, it makes no legal or moral sense even as it wasn’t mentioned or implied at all in all of Christ’s doctrines.
We find this in 1Cor 15:22 that as all died in Adam, all shall be made alive in Christ.
Let’s digress a bit to mention another lie where Paul claims in Rom 11:25-28 that every single Israeli shall be saved, their behaviour on earth notwithstanding.
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Whereas the Lord Jesus Christ teaches that it’s the repentant sinner or the righteous from anywhere whatsoever that makes it to God’s kingdom, Paul maintains that all Israel shall be saved, no matter what lives they lead on earth. By this assertion, Paul demonstrates crass ignorance of the doctrines of Christ especially pertaining to the fate of the Jews in relation to their attitude towards Christ.
Jesus Christ gave the parable of a demon that was cast out but returned to find its former host open and vulnerable so it goes and invites seven more deadly demons to join him and repossess the person and the later situation is worse. This parable is directly applied to the Jews.
Having rejected Moses and the rest prophets, most of whom they killed, they also rejected Jesus and killed him and made their state of damnation worse. This is unknown to Paul.
Paul doesn’t know that obedience determines paternity in God: whoever you obey becomes your father and God as in John 8:34-44
Paul’s assertion that all Israelis must be saved regardless of their works is not rooted in Christ because Christ himself told us how a Jew and descendant of Abraham perished for being a rich merciless man. We know the rich man was a Jew because he called Abraham father. This is found in the story of Lazarus and the rich man in Lk 16:19-32
If this Jewish merciless rich man went to hell according to Jesus Christ, where did Paul derive his gospel from? A good student or disciple of Jesus Christ understands that his gospel is not categorised according to those it is meant for. His gospel is only one and it’s for the world in general.
Mark 13:37 And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.
So, salvation is not limited to Jews but is available to any nation that produces fruits worthy of salvation (note, fruits worthy of salvation and not any grace or belief in the death of Christ). Let’s see that the gospel is one and that salvation is for WHOSOEVER fulfills the conditionality in Matt 21:23-45 Verses 41-45 clearly state that the exclusive right to salvation given to the Jews by God (see John 4:22) has been taken from them and made available to whosoever fulfills the conditionality (absolute love for God and loving our neighbour as ourselves) for salvation and that wicked unrepentant Jews shall be miserably destroyed by God even though they are Jews.
In Matt 12:39-45, Jesus Christ unequivocally stated that the Jews are worse off with his coming because having rejected the prophets who came before him, they also rejected him (Jesus Christ). Describing them as wicked and adulterous, he has only words of condemnation for the Jews in spite of the patriarchs like Abraham, David, etc., and all the different ways in which God was manifest to them. Just read the scripture below to see that Paul’s “All Israel shall be saved” is bankrupt. Also, in Luke 13:16, a daughter of Abraham, a Jew, was bound for eighteen years by the devil until Jesus set her free!
In the case of the so-called fall of man which ostensibly brought about the original sin, making sin hereditary or congenital, there are many Pauline scriptures like 1Cor15:22 in the New Testament and Lam 5:7 in the Old Testament which supports the doctrine but my only authority for writing this is Christ and whatever is written in the Bible is only correct to the extent that it agrees with Jesus Christ.
Before we begin to marshal scriptural grounds on which we consider the doctrine of the original sin or the fall of man bankrupt, it’s important to point out that such doctrines seek to portray God as wicked even as we know that Paul who enunciated it couldn’t prove it. He simply concluded the discussion as a mystery after having boxed himself into a conundrum.
According to Jesus Christ, the gospel he presents is as simple as looking up the sky to tell whether or not it’s going to rain (Matt 16:3) just as he sometimes invites us to subject his or other people’s position to human logic (as in the case of paying tax to Caesar, healing the paralytic, the woman caught in adultery, healing the Canaanite woman’s daughter, determining what defiles a man and healing on the Sabbath day) and judges for ourselves: implying that man has the intrinsic capacity to understand the things of God if he wants to but most times a man doesn’t understand God (or pretends not to understand God) not because he can’t but because he won’t.
If people inherit certain capacities to commit certain sins (since it appears that different individuals specialise in different sins), God would not have the moral right to judge people since humanity would be under some irresistible compulsion to sin but that’s not the case.
Children are born innocent or righteous (Matt 18:1-6 & 10; 19:14) devoid of any capacity to think evil, hence the demand by our LORD Jesus Christ that we are like children if we are to end up in heaven. If children are born sinless according to Christ, original sin doesn’t exist.
Clearly, man is a sinner by practice and not a sinner by nature because at a certain stage of growing up, we begin to make choices. Our thoughts, words, and actions belong to us and so are the consequences thereof. Our parents or grandparents are not involved at all. Ezekiel 18 (whole chapter) says it all: we live or die on our own accounts.
Although Cain and Abel were direct sons of Adam and Eve, they were not affected by this bogus concept of original sin so that whereas Cain was unrighteous, Abel was righteous. God accepted Abel but rejected Cain on the basis of their works, not their parents. Gen 4:3-8.
Also, Lot and his family lived in a very sinful country called Sodom but he and his family remained righteous. If it was automatic and uncontrollable to sin because of the so-called original sin, there won’t be a single account of a man who was righteous in the Scriptures but we have many righteous people who lived and pleased God both in the Old and New Testaments alike.
There are just too many lies about man which serve as a tool to keep us down. For instance, a man that wasn’t even born again was possessed by thousands of demons (a legion) for a long time but they couldn’t kill him until Jesus delivered him. Man is not as vulnerable as we have been made to believe principally because he is made in the image of God.
Every man that’s walking down the road isn’t just a piece of cake for the devil because he is carrying God inside of him.
So, if Adam and Eve fell and failed God and it didn’t stop Abel from being righteous, although he is a direct son of theirs, it won’t affect me because I’m determined that it won’t in addition to the precious Holy Spirit and the angels of God available to help me. The fall of Adam is the fall of Adam, not that of anyone else (Ezekiel 18).
If not that men are really not interested in righteousness, the singular mention by Jesus Christ that children are righteous should settle this argument about original sin because if I’m born sinless, it could only be because no sin followed me from Adam or anywhere else.
Quod erat demonstrandum. What other evidence do we need to prove the righteousness of children having been told that their angels always behold the face of the Almighty God? They have no need of praying, fast, giving of alms, etc. in order to secure God’s approval. They are automatically righteous. Praise God.
The fall of man or the original sin is a lie. Since God’s kingdom is based on mercy, justice, and faith (Matt 23:23), how could a just God put the sin of the father on the son who might not have been born at the time the sin was committed? Even if the child had been born at the time his father committed a certain sin, how does it concern the child?
Now hear this:
Gen 18:25
That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?
Of course, the judge of all the earth always does right; he never metes out the same fate to both the righteous as well as the wicked. Note, however, that judgment of God is different from natural occurrences: the things that have been pre-programmed to happen on earth and affect all the inhabitants.
For instance, Jesus Christ suffered hunger simply because he is in a place where people suffer hunger, not because he committed any sin whatsoever. But, the good news is that the power and mercies of God also extend to natural occurrences so that a child of God could always be in control if he would.
Joshua and Caleb were sons of wicked unrepentant Hebrews but God didn’t destroy them together with their stiff-necked fathers. Whereas their fathers fell and died in the desert as a judgment for their sin, their children made it to the Promised Land. Jacob was righteous but Esau was godless although they were sons of the same parents. Original sin doesn’t exist.
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